In the present manufacture process of One Drop Filling (ODF) for liquid crystal panel, related apparatuses includes a sealant dispensing apparatus, a liquid crystal filling apparatus, a vacuum lamination apparatus and a sealant curing apparatus. After processes of sealant dispensing and liquid crystal filling, a thin-film-transistor (TFT) substrate and a color filter (CF) substrate will be processed with a vacuum lamination process, and then sealant for sealing the liquid crystal will be cured after the vacuum lamination process, so as to finish a cell manufacturing process for liquid crystal cells.
The present processes of vacuum lamination and sealant curing for liquid crystal panel relate to a vacuum lamination apparatus, a sealant curing apparatus and robot arms for transferring substrates in the manufacturing processes. The thin-film-transistor substrate and the color filter substrate will be sent to the vacuum lamination apparatus by the robot arms, and then with operations of alignment and air pumping, wherein both of them then will be laminated to form a substrate assembly in vacuum status. The time that a present vacuum lamination apparatus costs on performing vacuum lamination is about 100 seconds. Since the time that the vacuum lamination apparatus costs on feeding in the substrates is about 30 seconds. Besides, air pumping from normal-pressure status to vacuum status of 0.2 Pa usually needs 35 to 45 seconds, thus it can be seen from this that the process of vacuum lamination mainly take time on actions of substrate moving in and air pumping.
After finishing the process of vacuum lamination, the substrate assembly then returns to a normal-pressure status and is transferred to the sealant curing apparatus by the robot arms. Generally speaking, the transferring time is 1 to 2 minutes. Sealant in the substrate assembly needs to finish curing in a certain time after returning to the normal-pressure status (normally 5 to 10 minutes), otherwise, the sealant which is not fully cured will be impacted by external air pressure to thus cause liquid crystal to leak out. Meanwhile, the sealant which is not fully cured also easily leads to alignment deviation of both of the substrates and affects the quality of manufacturing. Hence, time management for transferring into the sealant curing apparatus and processing sealant curing is strictly demanded.
Furthermore, with the increase of size of liquid crystal panel, the sealant curing apparatus is using ultraviolet lamps having larger power to ensure irradiation area and uniformity of ultraviolet light, and also the number of lamps is increased. Because the lamps are high-priced and require a large amount of electricity and cooling devices; and simultaneously still need to be used with masks to ensure safety of products, so that equipment cost for conventional sealant curing apparatus is quite considerable.
Hence, it is necessary to provide a liquid crystal cell manufacturing device and a method thereof to overcome the problems existing in the conventional technology.